Mall Messiahs (Part 2)

Spiritual Fulfillment Requires More Sacrifice, Less Comfort

Read Part 1 here

Meme stonks and crypto provide hundreds of thousands moral meaning (giving power to the people), devout purpose (going to the moon or taking down “The Man”), steady ritual (buying the dip or “gm”), and passionate community (servers to subreddits). There’s a prophet: Satoshi, and sacred text: The White Paper. The very first block is even called The Genesis Block.

There are many things to say about the crypto cult, some of which I even said here. One facet of the crypto cult that makes it so seductive is, because it is relatively new - one of the few online religions that strictly has roots in the 21st century - it has many meanings to many groups. For a while, crypto was touted by white nationalists like Richard Spencer that wanted to throw mud in Big Bank’s eye. In a year of humiliating setbacks for the center-left media, their most visible disaster was backing SBF and FTX. Especially because SBF gave dark money to Republicans knowing if he didn’t do this privately, the Woodward army would have been sniffing through his trash like a pack of alcoholic raccoons.

There are less crypto enthusiasts after the crash. Like most faiths, the WAGMI crowd sees this as a test of faith and integrity. But most faiths cannot put financial success front and center. For this, all the din about DAOs and NFTs. Crypto is not just about losing money. It’s about new communities and furthering horizons for starving artists. A few big crypto wins in the future may hide the shallow collective effervescence of crypto. Its latest and greatest scandal puts it on the bookshelf with other high-dollar cults like Scientology.

Two religions that have deeper roots and are growth industries are fashion and gaming. Fashion’s two big pontiffs are Influencers and Rappers. Influencers are like travelling pastors spreading the gospel of drip and lewks. With trends having a very short shelf life though, influencers are at the bottom end of the totem pole. Kanye West, meanwhile, morally upsetting and wrong wrong wrong as he is, may prove to be crazy like a fox in a henhouse if he ends up succeeding with whatever direct to consumer fashion items he promotes next. There are not many white nationalists in America, but there are many anti-Semites. Despite potentially being the pope of fashion though, the anti-woke believers may have an even weaker bond than the SJWs. As we have seen time and again, right-wing trolls do best against an appalled liberal audience on Twitter. When it’s just them, they turn on each other and accuse each other of pedophilia.

Gaming is currently the only serious hope for the metaverse. Zuckerberg’s Horizons keeps delivering schadenfreude delights. But no one points and laughs at Roblox, Fortnite or Minecraft, the three biggest countries in the Metaverse right now. Since these are still major video games backed by major video game companies, you cannot move your avatar and wallet seamlessly between these realms. Kinda like those countries that don’t allow you to leave. And we know how those countries tend to lose loyalists.

So now that we’ve had a nice overview of the different faiths that have proliferated online, we must ask what led to this? Paradoxically, New Atheism. Atheism in the 2000s to early 2010s was like rock in the late ‘60s early ‘70s. Sexy, rebellious, cool. As the wokeness virus spread though and Islamophobes aimed their sights at Obama (more on him later) New Atheists were increasingly coded as right-wing in the culture wars. When asked what would replace God, most New Atheists (especially the amateur ones on Reddit) just pointed towards being a good moral person for the sake of being good. Not a big mystery how wokeness would fill the void left by New Atheists then.

As Matt Klein says in the Substack that inspired this post, trend leads to counter trend. As social justice grew as a religious movement, traditional Catholicism grew as an ostentatious counterpoint in the culture wars. Even your garden variety borderline-lapsed Catholic from the suburbs might roll their eyes at tradcath faux pas like, say, claiming the Pope isn’t Catholic. But like so much that the extremely online right wing does, this only makes sense in the context of needling libs. The mass should be read in Latin not because any tradcaths actually speak Latin, just because stanning Western Civ makes a strong counterpoint to DEI.

One massive component of trad revivalism in general online is the natalist movement. For decades, liberals have argued that Roe v. Wade was the least that could be done to stem the tide of overpopulation, which is an enormous drain on natural resources. Less than a month ago, the Earth’s population hit 8 billion. With Roe v. Wade repealed, this is only more alarming for overpopulation opponents. Some are even using the MSM to suggest voluntary extinction. But the other side of this coin is that, though the current population is 8 billion, the fertility rate may lead to human extinction if it doesn’t increase. Natalists like Elon Musk are making appeals to longtermism and suggesting an increase in reproduction for the good of the universe. But its not only Silicon Valley gods that are ringing that bell. Here’s what a celebrated Instagrammer said in a recent interview:

I’ve noticed a counter culture movement brewing online where the emphasis seems to be on rejecting neoliberal ideas of individualism and increasingly atomized living as a sort of virtue for the sake of our children who would suffer at the hands of climate catastrophe or just the cold hard reality of consciousnesses. Accounts like @carnivoreaurelius or @saveyoursons offer practical advice about the benefits of high quality red meats, the dangers of seed oils, not sunning your asshole enough and soulless dating apps. They provide some respite from the nauseating reality of the current leftist ideology that’s left a lot of us childless at 30 because of eugenicist level logic like “why would I contribute to our planet’s overpopulation issue?”. Pundits like Jordan Peterson and Candace Owens have built entire careers off this grift of “no nonsense” steps to a better, more righteous life. Don’t get me wrong, are these neoconservative pysops? Sure. But at this point it’s just about choosing which psyop makes life on Earth tolerable for you. I grew up in a culture that shunned the idea of marriage and children altogether because it reminded us of the traumatic lives our female ancestors just had to accept due to their lack of autonomy. Some cope by stating how relieved they are to enjoy their 20s without the responsibility of family and that they have plenty of time not realizing how hard pregnancy is on the body after the age of 32 or how expensive it is to freeze your eggs or adopt. I was repulsed by the idea for most of my life and then it hit me about a year ago…without a solid partner and cute fat babies around, life is kind of a hollow boring nightmare.

This line of thinking is helping fuel traditional religion, especially among women. But it may not be enough. Turns out the COVID baby boom never happened. Is this a surprise? If Gen Z can’t buy a homes, why would they want children?

It is for this reason that the antinatalist movement cannot be ignored, specifically the Efilist wing. Sandy Hook shooter Adam Lanza was an anti-natalist extremist that believed reproduction was morally wrong and shot schoolchildren as a result. For obvious reasons, many incels are antinatalists. Again, this is the danger of too many disposable, fruitless gods: nihilism. Some incels have fled to the manosphere and are not only espousing traditional male beliefs but are zealously promoting raw eggs and milk as a reaction to the soy life. Many incels are eating raw eggs and going to the gym to break out of the incel prison and find a wife, possibly a family.

Right-wingers are not the only ones drawn to the siren call of traditional faith. The liberal do-gooder movement was fueled by Obama, who appeared to many newly godless whites as a magical negro Christ figure. Like Christ, Obama was a turn-the-other-cheek forgiveness kinda guy, reaching across the aisle to a fault. But when Trump took office, the woke mob became more of a fire and brimstone lot, never accepting any apologies from the newly canceled and banishing them from Twitter (no wonder many journalists are lamenting its demise; you can’t be banished from a sunken city.)

The Church of Obama would probably have even more power and might except for its two major weaknesses: no scapegoat and no sacrifice. Christianity is such a powerful religion because, while we might not like that Jesus was crucified, we are grateful for his sacrifice. With cancel culture, it’s turtles all the way down. It’s too big a business to be satisfied with choosing Harvey Weinstein as the ultimate scapegoat. It needs a new villain every week. As for sacrifice, nothing should ever get in the way of comfort. ASMR is the communion wafer for the Let People Enjoy Things crowd. Many of the Obammers, post-lockdown, have even decided they preferred living from home. Using their social discomfort as an unreliable moral compass, they have shoehorned new moral edicts from their laptop in the kitchen such as “Though shalt not hug grandchildren without permission.”

Another traditional spiritual practice that has caught fire online is manifesting. Huge on TiTok and typically associated with The Secret, it has deeper roots in the positive thinking movement of the ‘50s and even goes back to New Thought. It is here that we see the crux of most of the new faiths: personal prosperity and gain. Who is writing a Harry Potter ship hoping it doesn’t go viral? Who virtue signals for the sake of being ignored? This wasn’t always the case with religion. Before Norman Vincent Peale and his gospel of positive thinking, Christians typically believed that they were but worms in the garden of God. After the ‘50s, more and more churches promoted personal prosperity. One of those worshipers: Donald Trump.

Online, people do not only wish to fill the void with material wealth. They also seek knowledge.

Click here for part 3.